


SQUID PRO QUO

by karanguni



Series: Nasdack [8]
Category: FFVII, FFXII
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Multi, Other, Tentacles, real world AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-17
Updated: 2009-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:48:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tseng, Rufus, Balthier/DRUG PRODUCING TENTACLE MONSTER.  Crack; as such, stands outside the Nasdack timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SQUID PRO QUO

'You have got to be joking,' Balthier says, his voice edging into actual disbelief.

Rufus shakes his head, sliding an access keycard through the last of what seems to Balthier to be a hundred security clearance doors. It hisses open. Rufus slips inside, and Tseng follows - like he always does - immediately afterwards, so Balthier is left with the choice of being either abandoned or forced to trail after.

'What are you calling this?' Balthier asks as he pads, unwilling, into the laboratory. The entire place smells like antiseptic and something fouler. 'Indulging in the sins of the father?'

'If you put it that way,' Rufus says ponderously, stopping at the last of the --- tanks. 'Father called it hard work, you know.' He reaches inwards and Balthier wants to retch or look away or call him out on charges of insanity that even the Bunansa family can't equal.

Tseng's face is blase, even when Rufus' fingers start to stroke the damn thing, and it wriggles, slides itself between Rufus' digits and squirms.

'Hard work?' Balthier echoes stupidly, his tongue thick in his mouth.

'The component of Mako that makes it truly addictive is chemically very complex,' Rufus elaborates, dry as if he's giving a lecture and not -- not -- 'It's a small component, but vital, and hard to reproduce in a test-tube. We usually extract them from adult, ovulating females, but their cycles are long and often unpredictable. Then we discovered another curious fact about these animals.'

Tseng makes a noise at the back of his throat, sarcastic. Rufus looks at him, and smiles like he's as young as he really is. The blond reaches his other hand into the tank and pulls the whole damned fucking thing out, and Balthier takes a full step back when Rufus comes up to him and says, 'Our scientists discovered that they actually secrete hormones when they're aro--'

'Shinra, for the love of god,' Balthier breathes out. 'Don't bring that thing any closer.'

Its tentacles twine along Rufus' arms, and it's getting Rufus' expensive shirt soaked through, but he doesn't look like he minds. Rufus runs a thumb down the space in between the suckers on one of the larger arms and the whole creature spasms before a pungent, familiar smell hits the air, and a greenish secretion oozes onto the white of Rufus' sleeves.

Balthier swallows. 'No.'

'Think of it as an concentrated hit of Mako,' Rufus says. 'Organic, though, so with less side effects. Or are you not game?'

Balthier looks up, tearing his gaze away from the slick mass of the creature. 'You must have led a sincerely fucked-up childhood, Shinra.'

'Occasionally,' Rufus smiles, all teeth, 'it could be very enjoyable. Are you game?'

Balthier has to breathe once, twice, before he rolls up his sleeves. 'Fine,' he says. 'Fine.'

'Good,' Rufus says, and it's almost a purr, and when Balthier expects the creature to get placed in his hands, Rufus leans up and lets part of it slide off of his hands with a slick, sickening noise and onto the exposed length of Balthier's neck.

Balthier bites back an undignified noise, succeeds, and then fails a second time when the creature's suckers pinch onto the skin underneath his throat. There's a sensation of tightness, and then wetness, and gentle, promising strength. 'What next?' Balthier asks, through gritted teeth.

'Give it some time to play,' Rufus answers, slowly pushing the rest of the creature's tentacles off of himself. Balthier is assured now that he is positively evil, because the creature's winding itself around his neck and one small arm is working around the shell of his ear, tracing and dipping and fuck --

Tseng comes up beside him. 'Try not to make too many sudden movements,' he says, his voice so flat that Balthier has to believe that Shinra's done this before, the crazy little shit. Tseng's fingers tug in behind the coil of the tentacle around Balthier's neck; with slow motions he pulls it away, and Balthier breathes a little bit easier until he realises that Tseng's holding the writhing, searching thing up in front of his face.

'You don't honestly expect me to,' Balthier trails off.

'Organic Mako, I'll repeat,' Rufus says from somewhere to the side, and he sounds like he's torn between laughing and something else.

'When I'm done with this, I had better be higher than a fucking kite,' Balthier says. 'And when I am, Shinra, I am going to fuck you seven ways till --'

Tseng pushes the thing into Balthier's mouth and it moves like it's been waiting for this. The suckers feel entirely different on his tongue, sliding and slipping before wrapping around and engorging until it fills Balthier's mouth. The smell of ozone hits him so strongly than he staggers, but someone's catches him just before he falls, and the next thing he knows there's liquid squirting slow and warm, trickling and it's better than concentrated Mako. Balthier thinks he moans, but his mouth's too full for him to tell if either of the two hear it.

-

After which, Balthier wakes up in a bed he has no recollection of ascending to, to suffer a long moment of awkward recollection; he re-finds his limbs and ascertains he still owns everything....with one unwanted extra appendage (dear fuck, there's something still in his arse) and with a long sick moment of rising dread/bile/horror he realises, unlike most of his drug-spent awakenings, this is not likely to be a spent condom.

As quietly as he can (Tseng is asleep, on the periphery, his hair a matted mass of...matter), Balthier reaches--

'I have to hand it to you,' Rufus murmurs, from behind Balthier, sneaky Shinra fucker to never be trusted again, 'you are...innovative. And rather persistent in testing your hypothesis. Poor Squishy was rather reluctant, he'll never be the same again.'

'You named that thing?'

Tseng speaks without opening his eyes. 'Rufus loves his pets.'

'A veritable,' Balthier panics, seeking fingers discovering that, in fact, the tentacle is not isolate, and in fact traces back to the whole, still slightly stirring body of the whole thing, which proves to be disturbingly snuggled up behind him like a cat and still all-over sticky, (he remembers with some horror Rufus saying, somewhere, I think it likes you, Balthier), 'fucking philanthropist you are, Rufus. Literally.'

The Shinra scion laughs, affectionately. 'All creatures great and small.'

-

'I'm surprised you didn't call it the Second Dark Nation,' Balthier manages, from the shower (the thing will not let go of his ankles, and inflates happily with the introduction of water.)

'Give me some credit for imagination,' Rufus calls back, 'even if I'm not nearly as imaginative as you.'

'Not a compliment,' Tseng appends, and Rufus laughs back, 'Seriously, Balthier, where did you get the idea to--'

Balthier thrusts his head under the flow of water, momentarily blind and deaf. It is, perhaps, an unwary move - there is a tentatively affectionate brush snaking upwards from the back of his knee.

With grim determination, Balthier grabs the most chemical-appearing shampoo in Rufus's stall (grey bottle, individual salonist's name, something to do with avoiding brassy blondes) and uncorks it (who corks shampoo, it's not wine), to upend the contents entirely over his unwanted companion.

After a momentary flinch on the creature's behalf, Balthier rapidly discovers the unfortunate (and unfortunately temporary) lubricating properties of a whole bottle of shampoo added to an amorous and pre-emptively wet tentacle creature.

'Are you alright?' Rufus calls.

'If you come in here right now, I'm going to have to kill you.'

After some time, Balthier finally submits to requesting help.

-

'Help,' he repeats, 'not a fucking audience.'

'I don't know,' Tseng says, from the doorway, entirely straight-faced, 'that sounded like a demand, Balthier, not a request.'

'It takes consistent reinforcing to train the niceties of politeness into a pet,' Rufus follows, 'can I hear a please, at least?'

Balthier tells the pair of them where, precisely, they can shove their please; his voice cracks to an uncomfortably high pitch on the last word. (Squishy seems to have interpreted it as a further command.)

'It's your own fault for being so wanton,' Rufus appends, calmly, 'and making puppy eyes at every young thing that wanders past; consider this comeuppance--'

Balthier shudders through the inevitable, wide-eyed and gasping.

'Oh my,' Rufus says, to Tseng, with warm admiration, 'you really do have them trained to a single-word response, don't you?'

'Squishy,' Tseng orders, 'heel.'

Balthier - doesn't - quite - collapse when the creature withdraws, but the sound it pulls out from him is entirely too absent of revulsion.

-

It knows little of its creation or its creators, but it has cognizance. It learns swiftly what gives it pleasure and what causes pain; it is, in essence, nothing but a congregated node of nerves and endings, sparking at each touch. Even being in air is a sensual experience, its skin so sensitised; it feels each molecule rubbing as it passes by. The mako tank might seem a cruelty, but it is a necessity. Only within can the creature sleep, suspended from pressure, pain, pleasure, in a soup of anti-stimulation.

There is a master, if not a creator; one with the bright crown, and within that master the creature finds comfort, for they match in wanton pleasure and needing sensation, with each touch and breath a matching stimulus to form a stroking affection. The other master is not a creator, but could almost be a destroyer; with a dark crown of limbs long and loose, flaccid and unmoving (as though the creature's twin had died and been made a trophy, if often thinks, with a slight stir of delicious terror), he will sit before the tank and lift copies of the creature, limbs rubbery and still, and devour them.

The creature cannot help but dream, in its sensationless void, of what it would feel like to descend that gullet, the warm moist surrounds, the entire envelopment as complete as its current lack of feeling but inverted, to flood it with concrete and total stimulation.

The third master...permits it this. After the first time, this happens often and alone, the pair of them furtive in the dark where the creature finds itself entirely known, each part of its being, its sensual needs, embraced.

The creature knows love.


End file.
